Permian – update through November 2019

This is an older blog post, you will find one on more recent data here

These interactive presentations contain the latest oil & gas production data from all 25,309 horizontal wells in the Permian (Texas & New Mexico) that started producing from 2008/2009 onward, through November.

November oil production came in at around 3.9 million bo/d (after upcoming revisions), representing a y-o-y growth of 0.6 million bo/d.

The relative increase in gas production was even higher (toggle “Product” to gas). In fact, the increase in gas output since 2018 was larger than in any other tight basin in the US (even the Marcellus!), as is shown in the following image (taken from our advanced analytics service):

Note that the M (y-axis) stands for millions.

Several customers and reporters have asked us whether we could provide more information on gas flaring. This is currently high on our to-do list and I expect to be able to share the first results next month.

On the well productivity side, the picture is the same as we’ve noted in earlier posts: there are small increases every year since 2016 (“Well quality” tab), but the productivity per lateral foot is unchanged. This is visualized in the following graph, which I also copied from ShaleProfile Analytics:

Of course, these averages hide the fact that there are areas where well performance improved or declined.

In the final tab (“Top operators”), the total production of the 8 leading operators in the Permian is displayed, including their well positions.

The ‘Advanced Insights’ presentation is displayed below:

This “Ultimate recovery” overview displays the average production rate for these wells, plotted against their cumulative recovery. Wells are grouped by the year in which production started.

The 2,261 horizontal wells that began production in 2016 (displayed in light-brown) recovered 220 thousand barrels of oil during the first 3 years on production, on average. By that time they were still producing 85 bo/d, down from a peak rate of 590 bo/d.

Early next week, we will have a new post on the Eagle Ford.

Production and completion data are subject to revisions.

Note that a significant portion of production in the Permian comes from vertical wells and/or wells that started production before 2008, which are excluded from these presentations.

For these presentations, I used data gathered from the following sources:

• Texas RRC. Oil production is estimated for individual wells, based on a number of sources, such as lease & pending production data, well completion & inactivity reports, regular well tests, and oil production data.
• OCD in New Mexico. Individual well production data is provided.
• FracFocus.org

====BRIEF MANUAL====

The above presentations have many interactive features:

• You can click through the blocks on the top to see the slides.
• Each slide has filters that can be set, e.g. to select individual or groups of operators. You can first click “all” to deselect all items. You have to click the “apply” button at the bottom to enforce the changes. After that, click anywhere on the presentation.
• Tooltips are shown by just hovering the mouse over parts of the presentation.
• You can move the map around, and zoom in/out.
• By clicking on the legend you can highlight selected items.
• Note that filters have to be set for each tab separately.
• The operator who currently owns the well is designated by “operator (current)”. The operator who operated a well in a past month is designated by “operator (actual)”. This distinction is useful when the ownership of a well changed over time.
• If you have any questions on how to use the interactivity, or how to analyze specific questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.

Enno Peters

Enno Peters is General Manager at Novi, where he has build an AI-driven data & analytics platform tailored for oil & gas operators and energy investors. Prior to Novi, Enno founded ShaleProfile which was acquired by Novi late 2021.